imagination is more important than knowledge… A. Einstein

Monthly Archives: August 2014

I read somewhere that babies up to two months struggle to recognize colors. Another fact is that babies prefer watching faces above all – Since it was a bit hard to find a proper carousel that would be both black and white, and have front faces “looking” down I’ve decided to do my own. My beloved helped me with that – the materials were just old T-shirts. A little fun project to do in your spare time – I liked it even more since my machine sawing skills were getting bit rusty recently.

As for attaching the “faces” I used regular wooden black hanger, and a fishing rod 🙂 The final product is a bit funny, but my daughter seems to like it very much. whenever the faces are there she just can’t stop looking at them.

– Servo (I used cheap Chinese servo from ebay – you can get one for as little as 2$ with free shipping)

– limit switch

– 2AA battery holder

– some wires

– PCB laminate

– Glue gun

– solder

I got electronic parts from local DIY shop for 5PLN total.

First thing is to reassemble the wooden box so that the hinges are on the other side (the box should open lengthwise instead of width wise). Then cut the lid so that both parts are separated. The lid should be cut with less angle so that it closes freely.

Next you need to do is to remove electronics from servo, and limiting pin as well if it exists. The end product should be servo with two wires connected straight to motor.

Next you need to wire things together. It is really not that hard – and nice exercise. The end goal is to have servo rotating in one direction until limit switch is pressed and when ON-ON switch is switched the servo should start turning in other direction that’s it really.

Actually the most tricky part is to attach servo to the box, and construct the arm so that it will open the box and turn the switch. After few failed prototypes made out of cardboard you should get it right. The final piece is made of PCB laminate.

At the end just attach the ON-ON switch to the box and your useless box is ready!

The configuration is very straight forward. Assuming your phone is configured to use your home WIFIyou should be able to access your streaming right away – just type on your computer the address (something like 192.168.1.xx:8080) and after selecting desired streaming technology you should see your stream. The next step would be to forward traffic from your router to your android phone:

Configure port forwarding on your router

There is a great page that will help you do that – I don’t want to write my own tutorial if something that great is available http://portforward.com/english/routers/port_forwarding/default.htm Just find your router brand and model and follow the steps. IP Webcam by default works on port 8080 so you need to forward your android phone ip port 8080 to some external port on your router like 8081 for example. The problem at this point is that you would need to know your routers external IP address to access it from internet. Of course you could check the ip on one of the pages http://whatismyipaddress.com/ or better http://www.moanmyip.com/ but that is typically changing (depending on your ISP of course). To get access to your router from internet you need to:

Configure your router to register on one of the free DNS services

This way you will be able to access your camera IP Webcam from anywhere. Here is good link that should get you started http://www.tp-link.com/en/article/?faqid=419 of course if you are using different router brand the configuration will be slightly different, but the principle should remain the same.

Assuming your domain will be something like “myself.no-ip.com” your camera should be available under myself.no-ip.com:8081

This time something really small – but handy. It’s literally just 12×1 pvc pipe cut the way illustrated. It makes a perfect, very stable Kindle holder. There are two furrows, one with greater almost 90 degrees and one smaller angle. It is possible to put your Kindle in them both horizontally and vertically (the Kindle buttons are not pressed accidentally). It is very good to use this with kindle page turner